Sabina Lovibond

A Reply to Elizabeth Wilson

Sabina Lovibond replies: Perhaps I should have confined myself more strictly to the ‘specific bit of textual exploration’ which I announced at the beginning of my paper. I ventured further afield out of a sense of alarm at the growing tendency for postmodernist views of subjectivity to be deployed, not just against vanguardism on the left, but against any kind of conscious resistance to patriarchal or capitalist normality in everyday life. And I mentioned Elizabeth Wilson because her work on fashion has seemed to me to give comfort, over the last few years, to people with a vested interest in female consumerism. I did not go so far as to say that Elizabeth Wilson countenanced this application of her ideas, and it is good to be told explicitly that she does not.